Trivia

Malik Frikah, who plays 17-year-old Clotaire in this film, was a world champion Breakdancer when he was 10 years old.

Loosely based on the 1997 best-selling Irish novel "Jackie Loves Johnser OK?" by Neville Thompson, whose French title is "L'Amour Ouf" (literally "Phew Love", and a pun with the expression "L'Amour Fou", literally "Crazy Love"), which is also this film's original title. Only the first part of the film with the lead characters' childhood was taken from the novel. This film is mostly based on West Side Story (1961), American gangster films from the 70s, 80s and 90, and on Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), although the director never credited Luhrmann's film as an inspiration, but several critics noticed the similarities between the two films.

Beating Hearts was the lowest-rated film in main competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival by both French and international critics, who complained about the film being too long, full of cliches, misogynistic, that it ripped off several classic American films, that the love story wasn't credible, and that the two adult lead actors had no chemistry and were outshined by the two teenagers who played the younger versions of their respective characters. Several critics and regular moviegoers also questioned why this film was selected for the main competition at Cannes when there were better films out of competition or in the sidebars that could have taken its slot instead. Screen International's Cannes' jury grid gave this film a score of 1.4 out of 4 stars, while Chaos Reign's Cannes jury grid gave the film a score of 0.9 out of 4 stars, and Ioncinema's jury grid gave it a score of 1.6 out of 5 stars. On Metacritic's article of the best and worst films of Cannes 2024, Beating Hearts was the first one to be included in "the disappointments" list.

The version of the film screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024 had 166 minutes of runtime. The version released in theaters in October 2024 had 161 minutes. Gilles Lellouche said he kept editing the film up until the weekend before its theatrical release and cut 3 scenes out - the dance sequence at the end of the film and the scenes that showed adult Clotaire being violent and trashing Jackie's house while begging to talk to her.

The May 2024 issue of Vanity Fair France featured 17-year-old actors Malik Frikah and Mallory Wanecque in a sexually charged photoshoot in bed with actors François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos (who were both in their 30s at the time) to promote this film. A strange choice given that the teens played the younger versions of the adult actors in this film. One of the photos features Civil holding Wanecque's feet. Behind-the-scenes images shared by the photoshoot's stylist showed both teen actors with their heads lying on Civil's lap in bed.